Kickstarter is becoming a fertile ground for remakes of old games

Those who fondly remember decade-old titles ante up to fund new versions.

Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter have been a powerful force in connecting innovative and risky new ideas with the backing that traditional sources of capital may not be willing to offer. But there's a second front to this battle, promising the rejuvenation of franchises that awaken longing pangs of nostalgia among the faithful.

Perhaps it's not surprising to hear that this has been particularly apparent among gamers. Building on the notorious success of Tim Schafer's Double Fine Adventure project, a wave of developers from famous series have followed suit and proposed fresh sequels, funded preemptively by the demand of fans.

UK studio Stainless Games was the team responsible for creating Carmageddon back in 1997. After stirring up a not inconsiderable amount of controversy with its mechanic of knocking down humans, the series bowed out in 2001, having been ported to almost all console platforms of the day.

At least until May of this year, when the original founders managed to wrestle the rights to the brand back from its previous publisher to launch a Kickstarter project to remake the original. It went on to exceed its original $400,000 goal and bring in $600,000 (actually not a huge amount in the world of game development).

In similar fashion, another late millennium title, Total Annihilation, which focused on real-time strategy on a phenomenal scale, has gone years without any update to the series while the genre becomes ever more focused on smaller strategic teams of units. Planetary Annihilation hopes to solve that.

This pattern raises an interesting situation for licensing issues. The video gaming industry is so young that its most recognizable titles won't approach the end of their copyright period for decades yet. But the resurgence of these projects shows the esteem that can be built into such projects even before development if they manage to obtain the recognition. It will be interesting to see if this comes up more and more with digital properties further down the line.

Even outside remakes of the games themselves, it's clear from ancillary projects like this history of Sensible Software that an audience who grew up with these trivialities is now more than keen to spend some money on reliving fondly remembered experiences.

Who knows if the games will be any good? Perhaps we're counting on these first few examples to blossom into the potential that many hope they have. Ultimately, that could be a deciding factor as to whether fans continue to support such projects or decide that their memories are best left in the past with rose-tinted edges.